Gannushkina, Svetlana

Svetlana Gannushkina was born in Moscow in 1942 and graduated in 1965 from the mathematics and mechanics department of Moscow State University. She taught mathematics for more than 30 years, from 1970 till 2000, at the Historical and Archive Institute which by then had become the Russian State Humanities University. Married in 1966, Svetlana Gannushkina has a daughter, a son, three grandsons and one granddaughter. Since the beginning of the Karabakh conflict in 1988 Svetlana Gannushkina has been involved in peace-keeping activities. She took part in the process of enabling hundreds of Armenian and Azeri captives to return home. She has been continuing this work within the framework of an International Working Group for the release of captives and search of the missing and hostages of the Karabakh conflict. In 1990 Svetlana Gannushkina co-founded the Civic Assistance Committee for refugees and internally displaced people. At present the Committee is rendering medical, social, legal, financial and other sorts of humanitarian support to thousands of migrants annually. For the last few years the Committee has been actively working in the North Caucasus. Since 2008 it has been rendering legal assistance to labor migrants to protect them from cruel exploitation by employers and extraction of money by law enforcement agencies. In 1993 Svetlana Gannushkina took part in setting up the Memorial Human Right Center, where in 1996 she established the Migration Rights Network to provide legal assistance to refugees. At present the Migration Rights Network comprises 57 counselling points in different regions of Russia, four of which are in Chechnya. In 2004 Human Rights Center Memorial was awarded the UNHCR's Nansen prize for the work of the Migration Rights Network for successes in the protection of refugees' rights. A board member of the Memorial Human Rights Centre, Svetlana Gannushkina is also a member of the Presidential Council on Civil Society and Human Rights.